Instructions for Pythonista beginnersbrowsing

Seeing a few new people join the forum and ask questions lately, I was thinking that it might be good to have someone write a quick intro to the forum, what some of the must-have tools, how to go about getting those setup on Pythonista, and how to increase your library from there. Pythonista-Tools is a great resource once you know how to use GitHub, but I could image there being a need for some extra instructions.

I know some of the hardcore python coders and forum contributors will be best-placed to do so, and can point to best practice. But for example, some tools like gitrepo, New Script from Git, Dropbox File Picker, ui-tutorial, scene tutorial, stash, etc... would be good to include in such a document or post.

So two things, I guess:

Perhaps some of the newer forum members and Pythonista users can describe their learning curve, and suggest ways for the rest of this community to help, if it's needed at all.

If there is a need, are there any volunteers to put something like that together?

The thing I do not understand at this point is whether the lack of documentation is required in order to keep this app available. As long as this app makes it difficult or impossible to read and write scripts outside of the sandbox then it remains safe.

Most new users can figure out that you can copy and paste code from a webpage into a new file and save that locally and run it. The next thing that brings up is - how do I back this up or send it to someone else? Obviously you can copy paste the other way, and we have seen new users figure out that they can share code in the forum this way. Then they start to get into the whole issue on using GIT or Bitbucket -- and the docs are pretty much silent on that. Does it have to be that way? Maybe so, or we could lose this fine app entirely.

We have seen two new apps come along recently that may signal a direction for Pythonista - Workflow, and Working Copy. We all know that you could pretty easily build Workflow using Pythonista. Workflow has Dropbox support, but no GIT support. Working Copy is obviously all about GIT but presents itself as more of a web page/javascript editor. Both support "Open In". So maybe Pythonista should reposition itself as a GIT front end like Working Copy and formally document and provide GIT support. OR - go the Workflow route and provide a dumbed down UI that includes an Editorial like private storage system that just happens to be GIT "compatible". Hard to say.

As a pythonista beginner with some (limited) python experience (MSWindows and Linux), I'd say that the biggest challenges and frustrations I've faced with Pythonista have to do with the limitations of iOS and Apple's walled garden approach, and the bizarre contortions you have to go through to overcome how hard they make it to get anything into or out of it. The other frustration is that, after you've developed something that works, you have to go through a bunch of other bizarre contortions to be allowed to let your project look and work like a real app and not have to run it from within Pythonista.

I don't see these as Pythonista problems - they're really Apple problems.

My other needs for coming up the learning curve have been met really well by asking questions here, and a lot of googling. (Not a bad way to learn, btw...) Really helpful utilities are not in the documentation. (Example: GitHubGet has been one of the most useful tools I've found, and it took me a day of poking around to find it... I kind of knew something like that HAD to exist, but it sure wasn't easy to find...)

I would love to see this stuff collected in one place, with some narrative around it to explain what problems someone is likely to run into and how to use these tools to solve them. I'd be willing to help pull something like that together, but would need to work with someone more knowledgable - I'm still feeling my way around. (Added a gui using the ui library for the first time yesterday! Before that, I wrote little hacks that were reminiscent of the programs I used to write back in the early 1980s. I've successfully moved from the early 1980s to the late 1980s!)

I'd definitely be happy to contribute to this -- especially having been there myself not long ago. What really helped me was finding other people's code and learning from that. However, one thing I would do as a writer of such a documentation project: make it for python 3. That means print('hello') instead of print 'hello' among other things.

I'll get started on a <i>very</i> basic help file for learning the app and a bit of python syntax, however I don't know yet where to upload it to...I'll keep an eye on this post for updates.

Could someone please explain how to get a simple blank page so I can take my 'Bucky Roberts youtube videos.(thenewboston).
I can use linux for my zed shaw vids, so if someone could tell me how to get a basic blank page to learn basics that would be great. This is kind of difficult for me, a beginner and I don't want to go back to windows idle, although that was easy enough. I like being able to learn on my phone at work.
Thanks!

Something I have noticed on other forums is that there are quite often a few discussions that are I belive called stickies. They are always at the top of the discussion list and don't go away. They always seem to deal with topics that will always be of interest and can be added to over time. I recently made my way here from the Editorial side of things and have spent time becoming aware of the Pythonista resources on Github, learning how to fetch files from the repository, getting files from dropbox and so on. It certainly would help to have a beginners thread in that it would help speed the learning process up. And if it was at the top of the discussion list you would see it straight away and not have to search for it.

On a side note and not to be provoking but I don't mind being circumscribed by Apple's strictures. There are other environments that offer greater freedoms but they are also susceptible to greater risks. Pythonista is wonderful but I don't expect it to be a production environment. I see it as a means to learning and having fun.

Personally, I would love to see the Pythonista forum on a different platform which would permit notifications, stickies, better organization,and better search capabilities. I don't mean to offend anyone but (IMHO) this is not the best forum platform.

ccc, I finally found the blank project page, it was sort of right there in front of me but I was impatient and overlooked it.
Thanks for going to the trouble to help me, I'll try to eventually return the favor to another newbie!

@omz Tried UserEcho and found it quite sluggish on my ipad. And a nitpick really but tapping above the URL bar in Safari doesn't return you to the top of the page which is a really handy shortcut. The stickies are nice though. :)

@Dalkey@Saturn031000 Really? What kind of iPad are you using? It feels pretty snappy for me... I've used Vanilla in the past, and I had massive spam problems with it, and the hosted option is quite expensive.

@Dalkey@Saturn031000 Hmm, I think I know what you mean now. It seems like UserEcho's scrolling is extremely sluggish in landscape mode. No idea what they're doing there, but it's significantly more usable in portrait orientation. I'll have to evaluate a few more options, but everything I've looked at so far has some kind of serious drawback...